Two Suspects in 2000 Ramallah Lynchings Arrested

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Aziz Salha, one of the lynchers, waving his blood-stained hands from the police station window. Salha was later arrested by Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. Photo: wikipedia.

Two Palestinian men have been charged in Israeli court after they confessed to their involvement in the infamous 2000 Ramallah lynchings of two IDF reservists.

The suspects were apprehended in June as part of a larger operation against Hamas terror cells operating in Ramallah and the Binyamin region. It was following their arrest that the two men confessed to taking part in the barbaric murders nearly 12 years ago.

“We notified the families of the victims about the arrests after the investigation, and before publication of it. We acted with sensitivity,” said police spokesman Dudi Asraf.

Yossi Avrahami and Vadim Nurzhitz had mistakenly reached a Palestinian checkpoint in October of 2000 and were subsequently taken to the Ramallah police station. As word spread around the city that Israelis were being held inside the station, a mob approached and proceeded to engage in what British photographer Mark Seager said “was murder of the most barbaric kind.”

“We told the families that the Israel Police and the security forces have not forgotten their sons, and that those involved in the crime will be tried irrespective of the 12 years that passed since the crime was committed,” Asraf added.